Undertaking Palor
It's early Found Footage, sure, but what will they find?
Crypt Keeper: (dressed as a film director and yelling into a megaphone) Quiet on the set! Deathly quiet. Ah, fond felicitations, fiends! And welcome to the Crypt. Tonight's sordid saga is about a couple of kids with time to kill. See, they're just dying to get into the horror movie business. And if they're lucky, that's exactly what'll happen to 'em. Lights! (a skeleton dressed as a crewmember activates the lights) Camera! (he closes a clapperboard with a knife for the top half) Action!
Teenagers Jess (Jason Marsden), Aaron (Aron Eisenberg), and Norm (Scott Fults) leave the local movie theater in the midst of a snack-related argument. They soon find themselves in a dark alley, stalked by a hooded figure with a glowing red eye. It turns out to be their friend Josh (Ke Huy Quan), who gives them a good scare with his video camera. When Josh tells the guys that he's hoping to become a horror filmmaker, the others offer him the chance to accompany them to the mortuary to see a dead body.
He joins the trio as they sneak into the morgue and find a body on the table. They recognize the body as that of Lucy Groves, the town librarian, who none of them knew had even been sick. Mortician Sebastian Esbrook (John Glover) arrives unexpectedly, prompting the kids to scatter and watch in horror as he beats Lucy's face with a sledgehammer and vacuums out her stomach contents to the sound of opera music. Norm's friends flee in a panic and leave him behind, but this allows him to overhear a conversation between Sebastian and the town pharmacist, Nate Grundy (Graham Jarvis), who has been conspiring with Sebastian to kill his customers with poisoned medicine in exchange for a cut of the profits Sebastian makes from the funerals. Shocked by what he's heard, Norm slips out without being noticed.
The next day, as Norm tells Aaron and Jess what he overheard, the trio spot Josh crying on his front porch, revealing that his father has just died from an asthma attack. Norm remembers that Sebastian and Nate had discussed an asthma patient being one of their targets, and gravely realizes what's happened. With the help of Josh's camera, the boys resolve to get the evidence they need to bring Nate and Sebastian down, filming themselves as they manage to identify Nate based on the snakeskin shoes Norm saw him wearing. Norm antagonizes Sebastian by delivering a container full of battery acid he says is from Nate and prompting the mortician to give chase, drawing him away from the mortuary so the others can sneak in and search it, Josh hiding on a storage shelf with his camera. As Aaron and Jess search Sebastian's office, they discover that Sebastian has been shorting Nate on his share of the proceeds, and decide to anonymously send Nate the incriminating material.
That night, an indignant Nate confronts Sebastian at the mortuary, having received the invoices the boys sent him. Nate holds Sebastian at gunpoint, but Sebastian overpowers his former partner and kills him by pouring the battery acid down his throat. Josh reveals himself, but as Sebastian starts to move toward him, the other boys emerge, all carrying their own cameras. Sebastian picks up his knife and Nate's gun and threatens to kill them, but the teens incapacitate him and impale him through the chest with his suction hose. As Sebastian dies, his internal organs being sucked out and discharged into a sink, the boys notice that Lucy's corpse is now smiling.
Tropes:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Sebastian talks to Lucy's corpse, revealing that he repeatedly sought her love and she kept turning him down, and hinting that he killed her after one rejection too many.
- Actor Allusion: Ke Huy Quan is once again a member of a wisecracking group of friends who team up and go on an adventure to put a stop to nefarious evildoers.
- Adaptational Badass: The boys. In the comic, they only manage to escape Sebastian's clutches when he trips over a rock in the cemetery and bashes his head on the murdered father's tombstone. Here, not only do they bring video cameras so they would have proof of his wrongdoings, they actually fight him head on, and end up killing him by stabbing his suction pump's hose into his abdomen.
- Adaptational Name Change: Sebastian Esbrook's surname was "Esprock" in the comic .
- Adaptational Nice Guy: Downplayed with the boys. In both versions, they genuinely want justice, but in the comic, they deliberately kill a stray cat in a ploy to turn the pharmacist and undertaker against each other. Here, they manage to accomplish their goal without harming any animals.
- Adaptational Villainy: Sebastian. In the comic, Nate suspects he's been holding out on him, but it's never revealed if that's actually the case, and he only turns on his partner when he suspects that he tried to poison him. In the episode, Sebastian not only actively screws Nate out of his "fair" share, but he kills his partner without much provocation.
- And This Is for...: Josh gives one as he watches Sebastian die.Josh: That's for my father, you asshole.
- Apocalyptic Log: The tape that Josh and his friends make as they embark to bring Sebastian and Nate to justice opens with them declaring how they may likely end up killed, and if such is the case, they urge anyone who finds the tape to bring it to the authorities.
- Asshole Victim: Sebastian and Nate, if that wasn't obvious.
- Astonishingly Appropriate Interruption: Just as Sebastian hears Jess make a noise and nearly uncovers his hiding place, Nate rings the mortuary's bell, prompting him, Aaron, and Josh to make a run for it as Sebastian lets him in.
- Autopsy Snack Time: Sebastian freely snacks on pizza and soda as he goes to work on Lucy's corpse. Near the end of the episode, he's seen stuffing his face with chips as he works on the corpse of Mr. Schwartzberg.
- Bald of Evil: Nate Grundy, the pharmacist who has been poisoning his customers with tainted medicine and had already done so to his wife, is noticeably balding.
- Big Eater: Norm, the resident "fat kid" of the group. He's introduced throwing a mini-tantrum because his box of Junior Mints was a candy short, then helps himself to the unpopped kernels sitting in a pool of butter at the bottom of his popcorn bucket. Aaron even jokes that Josh could make a horror movie out of him eating a Twinkie.
- Bittersweet Ending: Josh's dad is dead, but Sebastian is killed by the boys, and he had previously killed his accomplice, so the pair will never be able to kill again.
- Blackmail: Sebastian threatens Nate by telling the cops that he poisoned his wife. Things go downhill for Nate when the pharmacist pulls a gun on Sebastian.
- Blackmail Backfire: One of the rare instances of the trope winding up with the blackmail victim dead instead of the blackmailer. As stated above, Sebastian tries to blackmail Nate, and ends up killing him when the latter pulls a gun.
- Bring My Brown Pants: One of the boys checks Norm's pants to see if he crapped himself after Josh's video camera stunt in the alleyway.
- Call-Back: As he goes to work on Lucy, Sebastian is seen having lunch from Zemeckis Pizza, the same pizza joint that Lou Paloma from "The Trap" got fired from.
- Chromosome Casting: Every character with a speaking role is male. The only female present is Lucy, who has been dead for a while.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Norm's Establishing Character Moment has him dropping four different swears within the first five seconds as he exits the movie theater, all because his box of Junior Mints had 53 candies instead of 54.
- Creepy Mortician: Sebastian, who's more than willing to scheme with a corrupt pharmacist in killing said pharmacist's patients to enrich himself.
- Dies Differently in Adaptation:
- In the comic, Sebastian met his end when he tripped over a rock while chasing after the kids, bashing his head on Percy's father's tombstone. In the episodes, the kids stick his vacuum hose into his abdomen, sucking out his blood and intestines.
- Nate also met a different fate in the comic. There, Sebastian pulled a knife and stabbed him to death. Here, he gets slammed with a sledgehammer and has battery acid poured down his throat.
- Deliberate VHS Quality: The episode's last 10 minutes are filmed through the perspectives of the boys' video cameras, complete with heavy static.
- Distinguished Gentleman's Pipe: Nate smokes one to offset how innocent looking he is.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Norm remembers that the person who he heard discussing the murder racket with Sebastian was wearing snakeskin shoes. The other boys identify that person as local pharmacist Nate Grundy.
- Exact Eavesdropping: In an accidental case, Norm hides under a casket in the morgue to keep Sebastian from seeing him. While this means he's left behind as his friends flee, it also lets him learn about Nate and Sebastian's scheme.
- Fan Disservice: A shot of Lucy's bare breasts... on her corpse. This comes just after Sebastian smashes her face with a sledgehammer, and just before he pricks her body to let out post-mortem gasses, then sucks her guts out with a vacuum.
- Finger-Forced Smile: Sebastian does this to Lucy's corpse to get her to smile for him, with some assistance from a sledgehammer.
- Force Feeding: Nate is fed the battery acid that Norm delivered to Sebastian, allegedly by the man himself.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: The last third of the episode is portrayed as an early instance of Found Footage from the boy's cameras, the only episode where such a gimmick is employed.
- Found Footage: The episode switches to this format for the latter half of its run time, one of the earliest examples of the genre in media.
- Framing the Guilty Party: The boys manage to turn Nate and Sebastian against each other by the climax of the episode, which Sebastian even lampshades as Nate holds him at gunpoint:
- Norms delivers a container of battery acid to Sebastian, saying it's on Nate's behalf to make it seem like Nate was attempting to poison him.
- At the same time, Josh and Aaron infiltrate Sebastian's office to discover that the mortician was shorting Nate's cut of the profits, and they anonymously give Nate the invoices as proof.
- Genuine Human Hide: Josh shares a rumor about how Sebastian supposedly crafted a dead writer's book with the writer's skin. Given what the mortician's been up to, it's plausible that it's the truth.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Twice in the episode:
- Nate dies after Sebastian force-feeds him the battery acid he supposedly sent him (it was actually the boys who sent it, but he doesn't know that).
- Sebastian himself meets his end after the teenagers impale him and suck out his internal organs using his own organ vacuum.
- Homage: This movie-centric episode can be seen as one to The Goonies, Stand by Me, The Monster Squad, The Sandlot, and all those other films in the 80s and 90s which featured a group of wisecracking kids as the main protagonists. Ke Huy Quan, Data himself, even plays one of the main characters.
- I Love the Dead: Sebastian had the hots for Lucy when she was alive, but she often turned him down. After she died, he still admits his almost playful attraction to her dead body.
- It's All About Me: Sebastian only cares about himself and getting rich, no matter who he has to kill in the process.
- It's Personal: Jess and Aaron initially don't believe Norm's claims of what he overheard in the morgue, but as soon as they discover that Sebastian's latest victim was Josh's father, all four boys take it upon themselves to take the murderous duo down.
- Lighter and Softer: While there's a good amount of gore, the episode leans toward the playful side, having a group of mischievous and foul-mouthed amateur sleuths conspiring to take down a crooked mortician and his pharmacist accomplice.
- Medication Tampering: The crux of Sebastian and Nate's scheme. Nate has been poisoning the medicine he gives to his customers so that Sebastian can make money from the funerals and split the take with him.
- Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Pharmacist Nate Grundy has been conspiring with Sebastian to kill his customers with poisoned medicine so he can split the take from the resulting funerals. He also poisoned his own wife this way and wasn't tried for it.
- The Movie Buff: All four kids are pretty big cinephiles, with Norm, Jess, and Aaron beginning the episode by exiting a theater, and aspiring filmmaker Josh making his entrance by pranking the others with a horror movie scenario. According to the Crypt Keeper, they grew out of that movie-loving phase and became lawyers when they grew up.
- Noble Shoplifter: To lure the employees in Nate's pharmacy out in the open to identify their shoes, Aaron swaggers into the pharmacy and swipes a nudie magazine without paying. Even though the employees manage to stop him, Aaron can be seen reading the magazine in the next scene, implying that he either went back and paid for it or managed to swipe it for real.
- No Honor Among Thieves: Sebastian turns out to have been shorting Nate's share of the profits, and thanks to a little ingenuity from the boys, he kills the crooked pharmacist when he comes confronting Sebastian.
- Offscreen Teleportation: While they're checking the windows of Nate's pharmacy to catch a glimpse at his shoes, the boys are caught off guard when the man himself approaches outside.
- Post-Mortem One-Liner: One of the boys exclaims "That sucks!" as Sebastian's guts are sucked out.
- Ragtag Band of Misfits: The main quartet, who team up to expose Sebastian and Nate after they kill Josh's father.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: After he's nearly found out by Sebastian, Jess ropes Aaron and Josh into getting out of the mortuary. Norm tries to catch up, but he's forced to stay behind.
- Shout-Out:
- The movie theater that the kids exit in the opening scene is shown to have been screening Lethal Weapon (1987) and Radio Flyer, both of which were directed by Richard Donner, a producer of the series.
- The view from Josh's camera as it bathes the darkness with its red light makes it resemble the heat-seeking vision from the namesake creatures of Predator, produced by Joel Silver, who's also one of the producers of the series. One of the boys even makes the comparison himself.
- Show Within a Show: One of the boys mentions watching a film called Android Geeks from Hell.
- Sir Swears-a-Lot: Norm drops four different cusses in the span of a few seconds during his first moment on screen, and his friends are equally swear-happy.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: Sebastian works on Lucy's corpse to the sounds of opera music.
- True Companions: While they spend a good amount of time ribbing each other, Norm, Aaron, and Jess learn that Josh's father was a victim of Nate and Sebastian's scheme, and this convinces the boys to drop the comedy and work together to put a stop to the murderous duo.
- "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: The Crypt Keeper tells us that after the incident in the morgue, Josh gave up on filmmaking and the rest of the boys became lawyers.
- Wicked Cultured: Sebastian usually listens to opera as he goes about his work in the mortuary.
- Would Hurt a Child: In the climactic scene, Sebastian is more than willing to gun down four young boys when they announce their presence to him.
Crypt Keeper: (sitting in a director's chair) Oh, well. Poor Sebastian. A brilliant career going down the drain. (makes a sucking noise; cackles) As for the kiddies, Josh gave up on making movies. Seemed he didn't have the guts. And the others, they became lawyers. Must have been the taste of blood. After all, they were certain they'd gotten themselves a killer. I mean, (gestures to show that he's wearing Nate's snakeskin shoes) who wears shoes like these except a killer? So until next time, see ya later, alligator! (cackles)
